to speak. When occupied of a mellow October afternoon
by a party of the autochthones, in their pea-jackets
of blue or hickory homespun, it presents a gay and
cheery spectacle. Festooning fence and tree around
them, the Virginia creeper, or
Ampelopsis,
shames vermilion against the mass of pines that glooms
skyward beyond. Other tints of vegetable decay
fringe the brook where it winds from side to side
of the long strip of grass, green from the autumnal
rain. Little reck the assembled marksmen of Nature’s
stage-decorations. One group will be mentally
weighing the turkeys, another discussing the distance—too
long or too short for the peculiar powers of this or
the other individual or his weapon. Around the
rude target kneel two or three, scoring on it each
man his “centre,” above or below, to the
right or left, of the true centre, to counteract the
ascertained obliquity of his eye or his gun.
Here a six-foot Stoic, the Nestor of the glen, is
very formally going through the ceremony of loading.
Another is slowly, and with the precision of an astronomer,
adjusting the tin slides which protect his barrel
from the glitter of the sun. The chatter of a
bevy of country maidens ripples from over the way.
The horses whinny under their square-skirted saddles,
or stand “hard by their chariots champing golden
corn,” like the horses of Nestor, Agamemnon,
Homer and Gladstone before Dr. Schliemann’s Troy;
the yearlings in the meadow alternately gaze and graze;
the guinea-fowl now and then honors the shout over
a good shot with its harsh but well-meant rattle;
the rifle speaks at measured intervals; the prizes
thin off to the remainder gobbler; and so, with the
quiet characteristic of rifle-matches, the evening
draws toward the dew. The smoke-whitened guns
are carefully swabbed with tow and prepared for their
rest as tenderly as infants. Dobbin is rescued
from the (fence) stake to hie hill-ward with his master,
cantering exultant or jogging grumly according to
the result of the “event;” and the metropolis
of Petticoat Gap—for such, in the vernacular
and on the maps, is its unfortunate designation—relapses
into virtuous repose.
The implement employed at these rural reunions is
rarely the breech-loader, or even the short gun.
It promises to hold its ground for years yet, gradually
yielding to the little modern tool. The essential
characteristics of this we have described as they exist
and will probably remain. Variations in the rifling
and—where muzzle-loading is abandoned—in
the appliances of the chamber will continue to be
made, as they have heretofore been made without number
numberless. The patterns now fashionable will
give place to others, in their turn to be dropped
like a last year’s coat. Remington, Winchester
and the rest will retire in favor of new contrivers,
devoted, like them, to the simple task of facilitating
the flight of the leaden arrow with its grooved feather
in steel or iron. With them will rise and fall